ABSTRACT A survey has been made of the holdings and preservation requirements of ten
major European public service broadcast archives. The survey also covered "the
business they do and how they do it": the contribution made by the archives to their
companies. The archives also gave their plans for future services as media moves from
"tapes on shelves" to mass storage and electronic distribution. This report
summarises the findings.

ABSTRACT Based on outcomes of the technology survey performed in WP3.task1, this
specification is aimed to provide the detailed requirements for a number or "new key
links" to be developed in WP 4, 5, 6 and 7- the new tools needed to make preservation
work more cost effective.

INTRODUCTION A labour-intensive task in preservation work is human monitoring of
playback and recording equipment, to see if a signal is present and clear, and if the new
digital signal matches the original signal. The goal of the task 4.1 was twofold: 1.to
develop an automatic digitisation monitor - operating in software and on-line - able to
provide the human operator with information useful for detecting possible problems of the
digitisation process; to implement an automatic quality monitor - operating in software
and off-line - for the automatic evaluation of the quality of the signal, based on a set
of parameters computed for the purpose. This "meta-data" can be exploited both
during the ingestion stage - for example to take the decision that a restoration is needed
- and during the future use of the archive - for example to select only items with a given
quality.

Introduction The present Deliverable includes a report on the results of implementation
of the audio key links related to the analog part of the transcription chain individuated
and described in Deliverable 3.2, section 4.5. The analysis performed then revealed two
areas of work: the identification and assembly of a reference turntable to be employed in
all the vinyl transcription chains and the selection of optimal analog to digital
conversion technology. The two items touch different optimisation aspects of the analog
part of the transcription chain, as the former is related to the improvement of the chain
efficiency, by introducing automation and flexibility, and to the acquisition of know-how
about key equipment that are disappearing from the market, while the latter has a direct
impact on the quality of the signal that is captured by the transcription process, and
that will be preserved in future.

The average coding ratio of the audio codecs is close to 0.5 for 24 bit materials and
close to 0.33 for 16 bit materials. This implies that it would be possible to halve the
storage requirements for 24 bit materials and to divide it by three for 16 bit materials,
provided that the test sequences are representative of the average of the archive content.
These figures will be verified during the field trials.

ABSTRACT Film scanning and printing methods are investigated with respect to costs and
quality, for a reassessment of the cost and performance trade-offs for the telecine
conversion or high-resolution scanning of film, to investigate whether it is
cost-effective, over a 20-year media life-cycle, to scan at sufficient resolution that the
film originals may safely be discarded.

The basic idea is to hold beside or instead of analogue film a single digital film
master, which can be converted on demand to the required video or film output formats. The
main advantage for broadcast usage is that cost intensive multiple scans are avoided. The
main advantage for archival usage is the long term digital preservation of film. To be
able to convert a single digital master to all intended output formats (i.e. SDTV, HDTV,
film reprint) the minimum scan quality is given by the highest quality output format.
Maximum useful scan quality can be derived from stock properties (e.g. for 35mm original
negative about 8 Mega pixels with about 12 bits per channel logarithmic quantisation). To
avoid quality decrease due to the scanning process the sampling structure of the digital
film master is equivalent to the original film sampling structure (i.e. 24p, 18p). All
output formats are derived from the single digital film master. Several output format
properties have to be taken into account, proper handling of interlaced and progressive
formats with different field/frame rates, spatial and densitometric resolution and aspect
ratio (i.e. letter box). There are solutions for format conversion available on the
market, but they are either limited in spatial or densitometric resolution, in conversion
quality or in system throughput. A software solution has no limitation in spatial and
densitometric resolution, can provide high conversion quality because of no limitation of
algorithmic complexity (i.e. motion estimation) and has non-realtime system throughput.

ABSTRACT: The VIDEO QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEM performs an automated quality control of the
transfer from an analogue video format (3/4 Inch) to one or more digital formats (for
instance digital BETACAM and/ or MPEG files).

The role of Snell and Wilcox in the PRESTO Project is to develop a "Stand alone
black box" to be positioned at the output of the UMATIC VCR. The function of this
equipment is, to prevent loss of synchronisation and to detect and compensate for picture
drop outs. The object is to provide a continuous output signal to enable effective
transfer of archive programme material into a long term tape or disc store.

ABSTRACT Multilevel encoding report as a key point for video archive preservation
workflow efficiency introduces description of possible solutions to be implemented for
transfer from tape to files of a video programme: real time hardware based as well as non
real time software based multilevel encoding solutions are described with results of tests
and first level of integration ; cost per encoded hour and advisable choices for archive
preservation are as well introduced.

ABSTRACT: This document presents a detailed definition of the workflow for optimised
archive preservation. The automated management of metadata requires a process control
system (workflow management software), which provides an efficient central controller for
an entire preservation process.

Summary: There are many aspects of metadata. Two major considerations are examined in
this document: cost, and standardisation. Cost: Metadata updates in preservation work can
be seen as just an extra cost, but experience has shown that an investment in metadata
automation provides the central "process control" for total system automation,
leading to maximum workflow efficiency, high quality control and reduced cost.
Standardisation: The greatest overall benefit of investment in preservation work is
obtained when the documentation of the preserved materials is in a standard format, for
greatest access. Audiovisual metadata standardisation is currently a field of intense
activity. Within the consortium are the key archives and personnel leading European
activity relating to broadcasting, and they have links to related work in libraries and
archives standardisation, and internet standardisation. There is an emerging consensus,
which will be explained and justified. This document shows how metadata can be handled to
reduce rather than increase total cost, and provides a guide through the labyrinth of
existing and proposed standards

Scope This document describes the technical aspects of the Broadcast OPAC developed
within PRESTO, but also contains a user"s guide and administration and configuration
instructions of the Broadcast OPAC.